2022 AIA Architecture Firm Award

The Board of Directors and the Strategic Council of the American Institute of Architects honored MASS Design Group with the 2022 AIA Architecture Firm Award.

Read the AIA's full statement here.

Our first, largest, and longest-running design project is the design of our practice. We are proud to announce staff promotions and welcome new team members.

Read our full announcement here.

Dr. Paul Farmer was one of the world’s greatest architects.

Read Michael Murphy's letter honoring the life and legacy of Dr. Farmer.

Design and Healing: Creative Responses to Epidemics

Design and Healing: Creative Responses to Epidemics, an exhibition curated by MASS and Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, is on view from December 10, 2021 - February 20, 2023.

Read more here.

Read about the exhibition in the Washington Post.

Photo: Marco Barotti, Courtesy of Plastique Fantastique.

While combating the COVID-19 pandemic, the public has asked architects why our buildings make us sicker. A new book, authored by MASS Founding Principal and Executive Director Michael P. Murphy, Jr. with Design Director Jeffrey Mansfield, explores this question and unearths how the architecture around us has been influenced by developments in healthcare. The Architecture of Health examines how our built world was shaped by disease and reveals how historical examples can offer us caution and inspiration. Learn more about the project here.

Order your copy here.

Read more about the The Architecture of Health release.

The Rwanda Institute of Conservation Agriculture (RICA) – projected to be the first climate positive university in the world – is designed to train Rwanda’s next generation of leaders in agriculture, while supporting national priorities for agricultural development. Conceived and funded by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, and supported by the Government of Rwanda, MASS partnered with RICA to create a campus informed by principles of Conservation Agriculture and One Health, both of which emphasize the interlinking of ecological, animal, and human health.

RICA received the American Society of Landscape Architect’s 2020 Award of Excellence in the Analysis and Planning category.

The Family Health Center on Virginia in McKinney, Texas opened on January 26th, 2021. The center is part of a partnership led by the North Texas Family Health Foundation to expand healthcare access, improve health and wellness outcomes, and increase health equity in McKinney and throughout North Texas.

Read our full statement here.

The J. J. Carroll Housing Redevelopment project advances the vision of aging in community. The 142-unit age-restricted affordable housing community in Boston is thoughtfully designed to help residents live better and longer lives. MASS worked with 2Life Communities to develop a model for high density housing that prioritizes resident connections and communal activities linked to aging well. 

Read our op-ed in The Achitect’s Newspaper, “Lead with a mission-first design process to provide affordable housing,” here.

The American Institute of Architects honored MASS's partnerships with nonprofits, activists, and communities around the globe with the 2021 AIA Collaborative Achievement Award.

We are at a pivotal point in our society that calls for heightened attention toward the transformative impact of monuments and memorials. Worldwide, memory and history in built form carry a responsibility to communicate complex histories and provide spaces for healing. The construction of public memory lends weight to particular narratives, bringing us to ask: Who or what is deemed important? Whose voices are we hearing, and who is left out? 

Learn more about the work of the Public Memory and Memorials Lab here.

By taking our commitment to local fabrication to the furniture scale, we are making sustainable products that are better for the planet and support local craft. Learn more about MASS.Made here.

After a decade of implementing design-build projects, from Butaro Doctors' Housing and Mubuga Primary School in Rwanda, to the GHESKIO Cholera Treatment Center in Haiti and Ilima Primary School in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, we are proud to announce the launch of our construction division, MASS.Build.

Driven by principals of design excellence, environmental stewardship, and human dignity, MASS.Build will expand our ability to deliver projects of impact from start to finish. By investing in local construction capacity MASS.Build assists our partners in delivering projects that maximize value throughout the supply chain.

Click here to read more about MASS.Build.

 

Justice is Beauty: The Work of MASS Design Group is on display at the National Building Museum, in Washington, D.C. through September 2022. The exhibition introduces MASS’s work in the architecture of health from our first project, the Butaro District Hospital in Rwanda, to design for infection control in outbreaks of cholera, Ebola, and coronavirus.

The exhibition is organized around the themes of engaging, healing, fostering, conserving, and marking, and features completed buildings, proposed projects, and applied research initiatives along with photographs, videos, renderings, and models.

Read our full statement here.

Photo: National Building Museum/Elman Studio.